True/False Film Festival

The entire city shuts down this time each year for one of the top documentary film festivals in the country—the True/False Film Festival. It’s four non-stop days of films, dance parties, masquerades, discussions, art installations, buskers, and even a parade. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to welcome folks from all over the world to our city. It’s the tenth year for T/F and it just keeps getting better.

Documentaries don’t usually grab people’s attention the way fiction does but we’re absolutely hooked. In fact, it’s usually the only Oscar category in which I’ve seen every nominee. We ended up seeing 15 films this time around, and still wish we had been able to squeeze in just a couple more. Hopefully, they’ll come back into town in the next couple of months.

At the Jubilee

It’s been non-stop snow for the past couple of weeks and the temps dropped below freezing but despite the weather, everyone was out in force for the March March. It starts out as a traditional parade—there’s usually some sort of marching band, an elementary school class, some people on bikes, others dressed up like robots—but midway through it devolves into a bunch of folks dance-marching down to the local movie house. It’s been charmingly described as “Mardi Gras-meets-Portlandia”but I feel obligated to point that although Mardi Gras certainly predates us, we’ve been around much longer than Portlandia.